


Reluctant Rebel

by suitesamba



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen, None - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 00:19:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing Scene: Leia's thoughts on Luke, Han and Lando during the flight from Cloud City at the end of TESB.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reluctant Rebel

**Author's Note:**

> There was a day - long ago - before I ever read Harry Potter - when I had two young Star Wars loving sons at home. I wrote a bit of Star Wars fanfic back in the day and am dusting some of it off to archive here on AO3.

The man standing beside her was not Han Solo.

Leia looked over from her seat beside Chewbacca. Lando, arisen from the ashes of Han’s past, had both saved her and destroyed her. She would hate him if she could, but with the grief growing in her heart, there was no room for hate, and no room for joy. Had she been made of weaker stuff, she would have rested her head on the console before her, given in to the hopelessness, cried. But for now she would stare grimly ahead, find the others, come back for Han . . . The rebellion would not stop because Han Solo had been captured.

No, not just captured. Frozen in carbonite. Turned over to the bounty hunter who would take him to Jabba the Hutt.

_Leia . . ._

She turned her head sharply toward Lando to find him staring almost blankly forward, tense hands on the back of her seat. Who had said her name?

_Hear me . . . Leia . . ._

Luke’s voice, not Lando’s. Calling to her, plaintive and faint. But Luke was back in Cloud City . . . if he was alive at all . . . She placed her hands over her ears to muffle the sound of the engines. Closed her eyes. _Luke! Where are you?_ She saw him . . . _under_ the city. _Alive._

“We’ve got to go back,” she said softly.

Chewbacca whined a reply, a question.

“I know where Luke is.”

“Hey, what about those fighters?” Lando moved toward the pilot’s seat, protesting.

“Chewie, just do it!” She had lost enough today, and if there was any chance of getting any of it back she’d risk everything she had left to do it.

Chewie seized the controls and executed a perfect loop, effectively reversing direction. Leia leaned forward . . . calling to Luke silently, searching with her eyes. She didn’t question this. She’d had these instincts before and she was seldom wrong. In the back of her mind, she knew this was more than mere instinct, knew that with a surprising conviction, but she had no time now to solve riddles. This instinct had a voice with it, weak but insistent. 

“Look! Someone’s up there!” Lando was incredulous. 

“It’s Luke,” answered Leia quietly, purposefully. “Chewie, slow down. We’ll get under him.” She kept her eyes on the antenna hanging below the floating city, on Luke’s impossible upside down body, until they were too close and the ship obscured her view.

“Lando, open the top hatch,” commanded Leia. Lando moved without questioning her.

Chewie maneuvered the Falcon. They hadn’t lost him. She felt Luke’s blind relief in her mind as he dropped from the antenna, his stab of pain as he hit the hull. _No . . . no . . ._

She hit the comm unit. “Lando?”

Lando’s voice. “OK, let’s go.”

“Go, Chewie. Get us out of here,” she said softly as she struggled to her feet against the movement of the ship and into the corridor behind the cockpit. Lando, looking shaken and sick, was wrapping a blanket around Luke’s shoulders. Luke, impossibly, was still on his feet. 

She threw her arms around Luke. Held him like he was the only thing she had left in the world. He embraced her with one arm. He was as cold as the night on Hoth.

“Leia. You came. You heard me . . .” His voice, his relief and disbelief, filled her heart.

She released him and he staggered. She reached for his arm to hold him upright.

He cried out in pain as she touched him.

She stared stupidly at him, her mind refusing to believe what she saw. She was a trained politician, but had picked up triage skills in her years with the rebellion. Medic quickly replaced senator, and she got him into the bunk in the tiny medical bay and put a patch on his shoulder to take the edge off the pain.

_Someday you’ll tell me what happened to you,_ she thought as she made herself look at the wound. _Cauterized,_ she thought. _Lightsaber . . . Vader . . ._ Another reason to hate that venomous creature.

He broke into a cold sweat, as if reading her thoughts, and began tossing and muttering as she administered anti-shock. 

His face was a mass of bruises. She had a sudden flash of memory . . . Luke’s bruised and swollen face when they brought him in from the ice fields of Hoth after the longest night of her life. Just weeks ago. Han standing behind her as they put him in the bacta tank, wrapping his arms around her and whispering that he’d be all right, that he hadn’t nearly frozen to death himself just to lose his friend. 

_Han, will you be all right?_

Luke’s eyes opened, lucid for the moment, and locked with hers. She was suddenly sure that he was reading her thoughts, locking into her emotions. Usually, when he looked at her, she marveled at the color of his eyes, at their sparkle. But now she thought she had never seen eyes so haunted. 

“Where’s Han?” he asked hoarsely.

The ship rocked.

“Rest,” she whispered to Luke, brushing sweaty hair back from his forehead and kissing him. “I’ll be back.” 

He closed his eyes, gave the barest hint of a nod. Grimaced as the ship bucked and bounced.

She took over the ship’s controls and flew it—with two star destroyers and a host of fighters in pursuit—while Lando and Chewie tried to fix the hyperdrive. To her utter disbelief, Luke struggled into the cockpit, pressure cuff on the stump of his arm. His eyes were still haunted and anxious and he seemed to shrink back from the star destroyers. He whispered to himself, and Leia thought he was calling out to Ben, as Han said he had throughout that long night on Hoth.

Then, with an unexpected jolt, the stars turned into lines and real space became the eerie warp of hyperspace. Luke was thrown out of his seat and was struggling to his feet as Lando and Chewie rushed in. Lando helped him up and with Chewie back at the controls, Leia led Luke back to the medbay. 

“Where’s Han?” he whispered raggedly as she applied another pain patch and made him sip a sponge she had soaked in water. His eyes caught hers and held them, and for a moment she felt she was looking into a grotesque mirror of her own pain.

She shook her head slightly.

“Don’t worry about Han, Luke. We’ll get him back.”

“Back?” His breathing was uneven and shallow. But his eyes searched hers, looking for the truth.

She pressed her lips together. He deserved the truth. He had come back to rescue them. “Vader got him,” she whispered. “He turned him over to the bounty hunter.”

He studied her eyes as she spoke and reached out to squeeze her hand. She loved Han. He could see it, feel it. Better this way. She could never love him . . . not now.

“I was too late. I saw you . . . and Han . . . saw him in pain. I came . . . too late.”

“No, Luke. It was a trap. Vader set a trap for you . . . and we were the bait. You couldn’t have known . . .” Her voice trailed off as Lando appeared in the doorway.

“Hey Leia,” he said softly. His eyes wandered over to Luke. “We’re at the first jump point. Where next?”

“The Alliance rendezvous point,” she answered. “I fed R2 the coordinates.”

He grinned. “Well, he won’t give them to me. Wanna try yourself? I’ll stay here with Luke.”

She kissed Luke gently on the forehead, stood and left the room. Lando walked over and took her place. What was all the fuss about this kid? Why did Vader want him so badly? And where did it all fit in with Han and Leia? Well, like it or not, they were headed for the Alliance rendezvous, and he had already promised Leia he’d stick with them until they got Han back. It was the least he could do. . . the very least . . . After all, he had practically handed them over to Vader . . .

Luke’s eyes opened. Haunted, hurt, but not lost.

“Who are you?” he said. His voice was weak but clear.

“Friend of Han’s,” answered Lando. “You OK? You need more for the pain?”

Luke shook his head.

“You been with Han long?” asked Lando, his eyes moving up to check the status bars on the VitalScan above the bunk. 

“A couple of years,” answered Luke. He watched Lando reach up, push a button to increase the oxygen flow, hit another button to raise the foot of the bunk a few inches to elevate his feet. Luke frowned. Anti-shock should have kicked in by now . . .

“A couple of years is a long time for Han Solo,” grinned the stranger, flashing a brilliant smile Luke’s way. “Up ‘til you, I don’t think he stuck with anyone for that long . . . except for Chewbacca, of course.”

“How do you know Han?” asked Luke. He was finding it harder and harder to focus his eyes.

“Oh, we go way back,” said Lando. Luke watched him reach over, slide open a panel and pull out another med patch. Lando seemed as familiar with the Falcon as Han.

“You know the Falcon,” observed Luke. He was fighting back the pain, but he couldn’t keep the cold sweat from breaking out. _Shock._

“Used to own it,” said Lando casually. “Han won it from me in a game of Sabaac.” He was watching Luke with a critical eye. His gaze swept up to the vitals display again, back to Luke. He frowned, then pressed the comm button next to the door.

“Leia, got those coordinates?”

“Yes.” Her voice was calming even through the comm system. Luke’s eyes drifted to where her voice appeared to come from. “Chewie’s about to reset the course.”

“How far?” His voice had an edge, though he tried to sound casual.

“Lando? Everything OK? How’s Luke?” She wasn’t panicking, but her voice rose as she spoke.

“Not responding to the anti-shock,” he said softly, his eyes flicking over to Luke. “If Chewie’s got it covered, why don’t you come down here?”

She was in the doorway before he finished tucking a warming blanket around Luke. She came to the bedside, studied the VitalScan. She turned to Lando.

“Therashock?” she asked.

He held up the patch. “Got it right here.”

She pulled the blanket off Luke, loosened the drawstring on his pants, pulled them down and with ease belying her small stature, turned him on his side while Lando applied the patch to his hip. Luke grimaced, muscles contracting only briefly before he was out. She helped settle him on his back again.

“Twelve hours,” she said, her voice smaller than he’d heard it before. “Twelve hours to rendezvous.”

“He’ll make it,” said Lando. “The kid is strong. What he’s been through already would already have killed most people. He stood, leaning against the door. A long moment passed where neither of them spoke. “

“What does Vader want with him?” asked Lando at last. Even he could see there was something special about the kid, but what did he have that Vader wanted?

“I don’t know,” answered Leia, her voice no more than a whisper. She turned her head to look at Lando standing behind her. “But Vader doesn’t give up easily, and he almost always gets what he wants.”

Lando frowned, thinking of Han, the carbonite, the bounty hunter.

“So do I, princess,” he said. “And something tells me . . . so do you.” 

 

There were two other times in her life when the minutes seemed to drag like hours—in the detention cell on the Death Star and the long night inside the compound on Hoth while Luke and Han were lost outside. Both had ended with the appearance of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. But as the minutes dragged on and Luke persevered in the coma-like stasis brought on by the Therashock, Leia did not dream that Han would be at the end of this journey. She hadn’t known either of them a few short years ago, but now realized she couldn’t live without them.

_Them._ Oh, she realized they weren’t a mighty duo, an entity that survived only together. Yet somehow she knew she needed them both. Han, she understood. Hated to admit it, but understood it nonetheless. She loved him, wanted him. He was so unlike her. The wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Useless to fall in love during war, to fall in love with a . . . _scoundrel_. A man without a home, without a past. She closed her eyes remembering that last kiss, as tender as it was passionate. A kiss goodbye. Han completed her emptiness, and without him she was only half there.

But Luke. Another man without a home, with a past as cloudy as her own. Like Leia, raised by an adoptive family. Like Leia, committed to the Rebellion with every breath of his being. Luke was the fire behind her ideals, the action behind her words. If Han was her heart, then Luke was her soul.

The ship tugged suddenly, dropped out of hyperspace. Lando’s voice jolted her from her thoughts.

“Wow. Quite a crowd you’ve got waiting for you, Leia.” Lando had made it a policy to stay out of conflict. He had had no idea how strong the Rebellion was, or that his old buddy Han was in the thick of it.

Leia joined Lando and Chewie in the cockpit and pointed to an oddly shaped ship in the center of the convoy.

“Head for the medical frigate, Chewie,” she said, her voice weary. He roared a question. She smiled.

“Sure, go ahead and hail them. We’ll give them a head’s up we’re coming in. But I wouldn’t worry too much. They know the ship.”

“And there’s only one Millennium Falcon,” said Lando dryly.

She smiled. Lando was growing on her.

They’d make a rebel out of him yet.


End file.
